Illinois Shakespeare Festival Dramaturg Kee-Yoon Nahm spoke with director Robert Quinlan, who is also associate professor of directing in the School of Theatre and Dance, about the festival’s upcoming production of Twelfth Night. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Kee-Yoon Nahm (KN): Before talking about Twelfth Night, I want to congratulate you on the production of Into the Woods you directed recently at the New Jewish Theatre in St. Louis, which won five awards at the St. Louis Theatre Circle Awards, including Outstanding Director of a Musical. I thought this could be a good place to start the interview, since the artistic director of the New Jewish Theatre, Rebekah Scallet, is also an Illinois State University and ISF alum. What was that process like?
Robert Quinlan (RQ): Doing Into the Woods in St. Louis was a special artistic opportunity for me. Actually, Rebekah and I had plans for a different production of the musical for the Arkansas Shakespeare Theater in 2020. But that season was cancelled because of the pandemic. When Rebekah became the new artistic director of New Jewish Theatre, she put Into the Woods in her first season and asked me to think about directing it. But this would be in a smaller space with fewer performers and more of an immersive environment. It was exciting to figure out how to put this giant musical in a tiny space of 110 seats. We did it in the round with a three-person orchestra. The music director played piano during the production and was the narrator. Most of the actors played at least two, sometimes three roles. One of the most interesting actor tracks was the person playing the Wolf, who also played the mysterious man who turns out to be the Baker’s father, as well as Cinderella’s stepmother.
KN: That is quite a combination. The musical was not originally written for that kind of doubling. I am curious whether the actors had time to change costumes offstage. Or did some of the costume changes happen onstage while the scene was still going on?
RQ: Sometimes the costume changes were onstage and sometimes offstage. In fact, there were a couple of times where we had to invent improvisations with the audience to cover a costume change. Those ended up being some of the best moments in the show.
KN: That sounds like a lot of fun.
RQ: In a kind of Shakespearean way, the actors would go out into the audience and address them directly. It almost felt in the style of a Shakespearean original practice production in that the music was all live and the actors all played multiple roles. The actors were very aware of the audience’s presence. I think some of my Shakespeare instincts came into play when I directed that musical.
KN: It sounds like a great way to gear up for another Shakespeare production at ISF this summer.
RQ: Definitely. One thing that I am interested in with Shakespeare in general is the relationship between the performers and the audience, and the idea of the audience being immersed in a story. So, I am looking for ways to bring that to Twelfth Night as well.
KN: I also wanted to ask you about the last production you directed at ISF two years ago: King Lear. You seem to be alternating between tragedy and comedy, because you directed As You Like It before that in 2019. I am curious how genre figures into your thoughts about the relationship between the performers and the audience. How do you approach a comedy differently from a tragedy?
RQ: In some ways, it is the opposite of what you might think. I look for elements of tragedy within comedy. For a play like Twelfth Night, it helps me to think about the tragedy in the situations of some of the characters. Twelfth Night actually begins with something quite serious. A storm causes a shipwreck, and two siblings are separated from each other. Meanwhile, Duke Orsino begins the play in agony because of his unrequited love for Lady Olivia, who is mourning the deaths of her father and brother. So, the play really starts like a tragedy. I think having those kinds of stakes in a comedy helps launch the experience for the audience. I love that Shakespearean comedies are more than just silly. They are humorous explorations of what it is to be alive. The same is true with tragedy. To look at Hamlet, for example, I think it is a real trap for a director to look only for what is significant or serious or somber about the play. Finding humor, lightness, life, and playfulness even in a tragedy helps the audience find their grounding in the story. It helps the actors find variety in their performances as well.
KN: Many of Shakespeare’s tragedies also have characters who build a rapport with the audience, which is something that we commonly associate with comedy. I am thinking of Richard III or Iago in Othello. These characters are able to reach out to the audience and implicate them in their schemes.
RQ: And Edmund in King Lear. It was great finding the joy and humor in his nefarious plotting. There needs to be an element of playfulness in the relationship with the audience in comedy as well. I hope to achieve that in Twelfth Night.
“I love that Shakespearean comedies are more than just silly. They are humorous explorations of what it is to be alive.”
KN: Among Shakespeare’s great comedies, what is it about Twelfth Night that you are drawn to?
RQ: I love the way the play explores love. It is obviously a play about love, but it looks at love from many different angles. The characters all go on a journey of self-discovery through the action of the play. Overall, the play ends happily, but it also feels true to human life in that not everything is wrapped up. Love does not always work out fairly for everyone in real life, and it does not in Twelfth Night either. Although a lot of the characters end up being with the person they are “supposed” to be with, the ending is not wrapped up neatly in a bow. The play leaves you thinking: ‘Love is a magical part of life but it is sometimes not fair.’
KN: Can you go into more detail about where you see some of those interesting loose ends?
RQ: Sure. Viola’s journey is interesting. She takes on the persona of Cesario, a young man, to work as Duke Orsino’s servant. She then falls in love with him but cannot reveal her identity. So, Viola finds herself trapped in this disguise she has created for herself. But then, through the persona of Cesario, she is able to have conversations with Orsino that allow them to get to know each other more deeply and develop an intimate relationship. By the end of the play, to ask how much of herself is Viola and how much is Cesario becomes a complex question. Which of these is the person who will be in a relationship with Orsino? Viola? Cesario? Both? I am interested in exploring these questions.
And then, of course, the other unfinished business at the end of the play involves Malvolio and the trick that was played on him. This also has to do with love. Sir Toby and others exploit Malvolio’s unspoken romantic feelings for Olivia. To make someone believe that the person who they pine for also has feelings for them, when they actually do not, is truly one of the cruelest things you could do to someone. In the end, Malvolio has been made a fool because of his unrequited love. Olivia is also in a higher station in society than Malvolio. So, we are left remembering that love does not work out fairly for all people. Even though Malvolio’s character is extremely unlikeable, it is just an outrageously cruel trick that is played on him.
“The play leaves you thinking: ‘Love is a magical part of life but it is sometimes not fair.’”
KN: To connect this to the theme of love you have established, I think Malvolio’s journey in the play has interesting implications. When we think of romantic relationships in Shakespeare, we first think of people who are destined for one another like Romeo and Juliet. What this suggests is that these characters deserve to be in love, or that true love is reserved for certain people in these stories. For example, Paris in Romeo and Juliet is betrothed to Juliet, but the play tells us that he is not the right match. Paris is no Romeo, of course, but he did love Juliet. In fact, Paris ends up getting killed because he visits Juliet’s tomb to mourn what he believes is her untimely death. Although Malvolio’s fate is not as dire, he also suffers because he loves Olivia. The play leaves me wondering why Malvolio’s love is not treated seriously.
RQ: For that matter, what about Antonio, who has a close friendship with Sebastian that almost borders on romantic love. He is also left alone at the end of the play because his love is not considered important. The other romantic relationships in the play, such as Olivia and Sebastian, take precedence over his feelings. So, the ending of the play is bittersweet from his perspective.
KN: These loose ends are very interesting. They illustrate that love is not a singular concept. There are many textures and flavors of love in the play.
RQ: Yes. This includes the love between family and siblings—the love of Viola and Sebastian for each other. I am struck by the twins’ reunion at the end of the play, which is not just a reunion but a kind of resurrection for both of them. Their other half is brought back from death to life. I think it is quite profound.
KN: That reminds me of Viola’s line earlier in the play when she tells Orsino that a sister of hers was once deeply in love with a man. This is while Viola is disguised as Cesario, so she is actually talking about herself and her feelings for Orsino. When Orsino asks whether this sister eventually died because of unrequited love, Viola answers: “I am all the daughters of my father’s house / And all the brothers, too” (2.4.132–33). This strikes me as a beautiful line because Viola is also saying that she carries in her the memory of her twin brother, whom she thinks has drowned. Sebastian’s memory has become a part of her.
RQ: How interesting! I had not thought about this before, but Viola in disguise as Cesario would look like Sebastian. Elsewhere in the play, Viola says, “Disguise, I see thou art a wickedness” (2.2.27) when she realizes that Olivia has fallen in love with her appearance as Cesario. She sees that she is trapped in the disguise she has made. But also, the disguise is a reminder Sebastian, of the tragedy that she is facing in her life that she cannot share with anybody else.
KN: I wonder what Viola sees when she looks in the mirror. She might look to make sure that her disguise is convincing. But maybe she also sees her brother standing in front of her, looking at her.
RQ: Right. Her frame of reference for behaving like a man would be her brother, who looks a lot like her. So, in some ways, Cesario is modeled after Sebastian.
KN: The play is full of such double meanings and double images. It is exciting to explore all of that. Moving on, what can you tell us about the setting of this production? Would you tell us about the tone or mood that you and the designers are going for? Is there imagery in the play that inspired you?
RQ: The play begins with Viola washed up on a beach after a shipwreck. So, I started thinking about water and different places that people might have been sailing. I think I landed on Italy as an inspiration partly because both of my maternal grandparents were immigrants from Italy. They were married in Italy, and my mother was the first of her siblings to be born in the United States. So, I always had a kind of mysterious and slightly romantic idea of Italy, especially of Italy in the mid-nineteen hundreds. I did have a chance to visit Italy with my mother, which was a beautiful family experience.
I also think of Italy as a place where people find passion and love. As I started to think about when in Italy our production might be set, the 1950s made a lot of sense. There was a lot of postwar tourism to Italy during this time. There were movies being made in Italy, some of which were set in coastal resorts. That became the unifying inspiration. I also think that you will see the idea of glamor explored in the production, which fits some of the characters, since they are dukes and countesses. The setting allows for characters of different stations, since some, like Viola, are servants to other characters. But overall, I think 1950s Italy creates a romantic environment for the action of the play to happen. It is far enough away from the second world war that Italy is starting to rebuild. Yes, people do have tragedy in their immediate past. But they are thinking about what life may have in store for them in the future. I think this setting works well with Twelfth Night.
KN: Twelfth Night is also known as one of Shakespeare’s most musical plays, which I guess is another connection back to your production of Into the Woods. Will you tell us about how you envision music fitting into the world of this production?
RQ: It is one of Shakespeare’s most musical plays in that there is a lot of music written into the text. There are both songs that the characters sing, as well as opportunities for underscoring. For example, in Act 2 Scene 4, Feste the fool sings a song at Orsino’s request. But the lyrics are quite melancholy, starting with the lines: “Come away, come away, death, / And in sad cypress let me be laid” (2.4.58–59). While Feste sings, Orsino and Viola (disguised as Cesario) are simply sitting there and listening to the lyrics. I think this is an interesting character moment between the two. How are they listening to Feste’s song about someone who has lost their love? Also, how does this scene further their journey as two people who eventually fall in love with each other?
Another thing I like to do with music, especially in Shakespeare, is to use it as an opportunity for storytelling that may not directly occur in the dialogue. There may be ways to help add moments that develop certain characters or show us moments that might have happened offstage. We get to see these moments in a more theatrical context through music. I am excited to work with Jordan Coughtry, who will play Feste, on the way that music is interwoven into the story. I have worked with Jordan three times before on different Shakespearean adaptations that use music. We are currently working to create songs that give us the opportunity to get to know the characters more deeply and tell parts of the story that happen offstage. We hope that this will make it even clearer to the audience what is happening.
KN: So, music becomes a vehicle for a different kind of storytelling in this production of Twelfth Night.
RQ: Right. It will be a kind of storytelling that adds another layer of theatricality and uses direct address in a way that separates the singer from the world of the play itself. We might conjure certain moments from either the past or events offstage that the audience can become privy to.
KN: That sounds lovely. I am excited to see it all come together and work beautifully onstage. To wrap up the interview, would you talk about something in the play that you are looking forward to exploring in rehearsal? You have already talked about many exciting moments and characters in the play. Is there anything else you want to add?
RQ: I am looking forward to exploring it all. I have never directed this play before, so I do not yet have a relationship with specific scenes. Of course, I have seen productions of Twelfth Night, and I have scenes that have resonated with me. But the play is all still fresh to me. It is exciting that I will have a combination of actors whom I have worked with before and actors who are brand new to the Festival.
I mentioned Viola and Orsino’s relationship, but I am also compelled by the relationship between Viola and Olivia. I want to examine the layers in their relationship, and these two characters’ journeys of letting go of your tragic self. I am curious how these characters will shed their sadness and depression, and allow themselves to experience something different and new and exciting. I think all the characters have an element of this, which I am excited to explore.
KN: I am looking forward to seeing Olivia come to life over the course of the play. She is deep in mourning at first, but then goes through a transformation after meeting and falling in love with Viola disguised as Cesario. It is amazing not just that she falls in love at first sight, but that this love also completely changes her worldview and sense of self, without being fully aware of what is happening to her. Olivia has already become a different person by the time that she realizes that she is in love.
RQ: And she falls in love with an improbable person—a servant who has come to deliver a message. All logic would dictate that she would not fall in love with Cesario, and yet she cannot resist it. I think that Olivia’s journey out of her mourning is a very important part of the play. It will be exciting to explore this character with Jessica Dean Turner, who is a brilliant actor and a seasoned ISF alum.
KN: I know that many people were excited as soon as we announced that Twelfth Night is part of this year’s season. It is a favorite to many people including myself. But after hearing your ideas for the production, I think people are in for a truly special experience. Thank you for giving us a sneak peek.
Come away, come away, death,
(Twelfth Night, 2.4.58–73)
And in sad cypress let me be laid.
Fly away, fly away, breath,
I am slain by a fair cruel maid.
My shroud of white, stuck all with yew,
O, prepare it!
My part of death, no one so true
Did share it.
Not a flower, not a flower sweet
On my black coffin let there be strown;
Not a friend, not a friend greet
My poor corpse where my bones shall be thrown.
A thousand thousand sighs to save,
Lay me, O, where
Sad true lover never find my grave
To weep there.
